


Calm and Serene

by kannuki_neru



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode: s09e23, Gen, Guilt, M/M, Season/Series 09, Unresolved Feelings, a lot of Cas pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 10:30:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1741439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kannuki_neru/pseuds/kannuki_neru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd always had good intentions and the road to where he was now had been paved with them. </p>
<p>He'd made decisions, thousands of them, clutching free will that his kind wasn't supposed to act on close to his heart. They always felt like small victories, they made him brave and new. He was destroyed and put back together a few times as a direct or indirect consequence of his choices. But there was someone who had been proud of him, who forgave him against all reason and who let Castiel into his home even at a time when neither of them had one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calm and Serene

 

Hannah trailed behind him in measured steps and her presence made Castiel feel uncomfortable, as much as it could anyway considering the strange numbness that enveloped his whole body. Even the slightly painful itch of his stolen grace seemed distant, less pronounced.

 

She was clearly trying to be quiet, avoiding any commentary and Castiel could tell as much even with his back on her. It was almost as if all the angels were hesitant and subdued around him. Probably wondering if it was the appropriate time to apologise for fleeing to Metatron's side, for misplacing their beliefs so horribly.

 

Castiel didn't expect apologies. He knew best of all that while he'd always fought relentlessly to save Heaven, he also ended up vaporising and slashing and breaking things and maybe he was foolish to believe that he managed to repent for his sins, that his worst punishment was over. He now knew that he was wrong.

 

He'd always had good intentions and the road to where he was now had been paved with them.

 

He'd made decisions, thousands of them, clutching free will that his kind wasn't supposed to act on close to his heart. They always felt like small victories, they made him brave and new. He was destroyed and put back together a few times as a direct or indirect consequence of his choices. But there was someone who had been proud of him, who forgave him against all reason and who let Castiel into his home even at a time when neither of them had one.

 

Castiel kept his eyes fixed in front of him as he walked, Hannah's steps echoing endlessly.

 

He had Metatron imprisoned. He also had a grace problem, leaderless and confused angels problem, all kinds of problems. But he had won against the one who turned his brothers and sisters into comets of fire and pushed them to their fall. The one who carved his grace out and talked him into wielding a blade against a Nephilim, a blade he himself washed with blood. Castiel _had_ spilled that blood; that and some other too, still slightly wet on the blade, so much blood on his hands. Metatron's hands covered in it. _His blood._

 

They reached Metatron's office and Castiel stepped inside. He turned around, noticing that Hannah stopped just beyond the open door.

 

'Is there anything I can do now?' she asked, carefully swallowing the 'sir' she'd already gotten used to saying. He knew she had been hoping for more instructions regarding angels, any sort of advice he could give. She must have heard Metatron speaking on the radio, about a human who was apparently more special than others, she must have realised that she had to give him space but still, order and justice came first. She knew that he had lost something just now.

 

She knew nothing.

 

Castiel suddenly felt so very tired, fatigue deeper than the weakening grace seeping into the bones of his vessel. These days he found it very hard to make the distinction between a body that technically wasn't his and what he really was. That body had been all he was, once, the body and whatever it was that a fallen angel possessed in place of a soul. In this body, he experienced hunger and thirst, he understood things with too much clarity and wrapped his arms around the man who felt like indescribable elation and pain at the same time. There had already been a darkness seeping into his skin but Castiel was sure they would figure it out.

 

'Keep an eye on everyone for a moment. I need to make a private phone call.' he said, his voice even and quiet. He didn't even notice when she nodded and walked away.

 

Castiel stood in the middle of the room, everything exactly as it had been what felt an eternity ago. He'd asked everyone to leave it be, he didn't have the time to look through everything properly, even to pick up the pieces of the angel tablet. They were still on the floor, broken and useless. To think that this was the very thing he had been ordered to protect, to rip out of someone's hands and make away with at the price of broken bones and broken trust. Castiel had first touched the tablet in a crypt with a bloodied man who couldn't breathe because Castiel had broken the majority of the bones in his face. Still, he could reach down and heal him. Still, he had his wings and could fly to be anywhere in time. This one time he couldn't make it in time for anything.

 

Castiel made his way to the very chair he'd been chained to and sat down. He knew he had to call someone, and ask about certain things but his hands didn't move. The last time he was sitting down here, he was sick with worry but had a voice ringing in his ears,  _we've always been enough._ And it was true to a certain extent, and even if something went wrong it was always Castiel himself who died and disappeared, and although he never wanted to leave, it was preferable. They had always been enough until they hadn't. 

 

Castiel really had to get going with the phone call. He had to get in the car, dragging another angel who wasn't poisoned with stolen grace and who maybe had a chance to fix things. He was all too aware that nothing was working quite like it used to, that all angels were broken and incapable of miracles. He would have to go to the bunker and witness the only miracle he'd give anything for not happen. 

 

Castiel had been practically kicked out of that place but he couldn't help but remember other things more clearly. Warmth, safety, and the most stubborn man of all letting go, sharing his troubles in a somewhat uncharacteristic bout of honesty, spilling his heart out like he trusted Castiel not to break it. 

 

He couldn't bear the thought of going inside there ever again.

 

Castiel remembered the moment he stood beside a man whom he should frankly consider reckless and insane, and he stood there telling the prophet of God that they were not going to obey the script. They were making it up as they went ever since and that also meant surprises, it was impossible miracles and unexpectedly winning against all odds but it also meant this, right now.

 

Humans get dealt punches like this every minute of the day, somewhere. He had seen it happen countless times but nothing in the millennia he'd spent on Earth could have possibly prepared him for how it actually  _felt_ .

 

Castiel couldn't swallow the lump in his throat and move his body anymore. He felt ridiculously out of control over his vessel, small and alone. And he was.

 

_He's dead too._

 

It made no sense. It was never supposed to end like this. Castiel had plucked that man from the abyss, he would always find a way to save him somehow or be saved by him, pulled into his arms in the middle of the land of monsters. It had taken all of his willpower not to touch him in return and he should have, he really should have. Castiel knew that he had made such a terrible mistake assuming that they would have time to work things out, so that next time they could both wrap their arms around each other and talk. They were supposed to have a bit more time. Instead, the last thing Castiel did was lock him in the dungeon from which he'd walked straight into his death.

 

Castiel made him promise that they would be enough and then left him. He should never have left him there.

 

This is why it was such a bad idea for an angel to let a fragile creature whose life could be snapped like a dry branch at any moment into his heart. The one he'd allowed to take over his life had always been more brazen, stronger than others, and his soul was so bright it could never possibly be dimmed. Castiel was so wrong to believe he could tear the script apart and twist it into a version where his love for a human would end in something other than tragedy.

 

A human. That one human in the ocean of those he'd seen come and go over such a long time.

 

_Dean._

 

The moment his name materialised in Castiel's mind, he could no longer run away. It was all stronger and more overwhelming than he had thought possible. He spent countless centuries without understanding what love really was, observing but not  _feeling_ , and once he did feel, it seemed like he'd lost it barely a second later. Human lives were so staggeringly brief. 

 

Castiel wished he could just slowly disappear right there and then, disintegrate without a sound and without a thought rather than be forced to live through one more second of this searing  _burn._

 

There were still things he had to do though, he couldn't allow himself the luxury of letting go. It would have been so easy now, he thought, his grace thinning out as it was, so very easy. He would welcome the numbness and forget it all.

 

Castiel knew that he couldn't possibly forget, he couldn't bring himself to erase the man who loved his family too much and didn't leave any of that love for himself. Castiel thought that until Dean learned how to appreciate himself more, he would love Dean instead, he would give him all the love that he deserved. He would stand by him and accept whatever Dean gave him in return. There was a sinking dread in Castiel's heart as he tried not to think too hard about that. Dean never admitted anything, the least of all to himself, and it took a long time for Castiel to understand how obvious it all was.

 

He shifted and slowly started to pick up the pieces of the tablet. They couldn't be put back together just like Dean could now never become ready, as Castiel hoped he'd be one day- to make peace with his own feelings and allow them both to fall into the only thing that made sense. There would have been a day when Dean would pretend not to notice that his head fell on Castiel's shoulder and he would stubbornly refuse to acknowledge anything even as he kissed him. Castiel didn't mind no matter how long it would take because he knew Dean wanted that too. What Dean didn't know was that Castiel would say yes in a heartbeat, would always say yes.

 

He was supposed to tell him one day.

 

Castiel caught himself with a piece of the tablet in his hand, staring at it dumbly. He had reached a level of hopelessness he didn't even think was possible, and as it was slowly edging towards slight hysteria, he kept trying to assemble the rest of the pieces.

 

He knew that it was ludicrous to think that a broken angel who failed when it most mattered could possibly do anything to pull Dean out from wherever he was right now. There was no chance, none whatsoever. But it's been years since he met that man and it was far too late. He hadn't been immune to the Winchesters' penchant for diving straight into the storm, against all odds, even when it made less than no sense.

 

Now that the stakes were literally sky-high, he knew there was no way he could bear to give up on Dean Winchester. He raised him from perdition and was raised in return, beyond what he used to be.

 

There was no going back.

 

Dean Winchester will be saved again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Needless to say the finale broke my heart into tiny pieces and I just had to process all that pain somehow. I'm assuming that Season 10 will give us even more tragedy and sadness, sob.


End file.
